5/28/2011

Media Matters makes more false statements yet again

Media Matters makes more false statements yet again. This time they have a post with the headline: "Napolitano And John Lott Advocate For Allowing People To Carry Concealed Guns Without Permits." But the link that they have from my appearance on Judge Andrew Napolitano's show provides absolutely no such evidence. They have put up a video of about 2 minutes of a 4+ minute appearance that I have. The problem is that I never said that there should or should not be permits. Here is where Napolitano explicitly asks me the question about whether there should be permits starting at the 39 second mark.

Napolitano: I don't need to go to the court house and ask for a permit to exercise my free speech rights. What is gained by my going to city hall or the court house as the case may be in different places in America to get a permit to exercise my second amendment rights?

Lott: Well, I guess that those are the cases that are going to have to be coming down from the courts. The Supreme Court has only dealt with the very simple issue right now of whether a complete ban is constitutional or not. Can they ban an entire category of guns? But we see that some places require fees, large fees for getting guns. Some places require training. So there is a whole set of other issue. How much can they 'infringe'? How costly can they make it for people to be able to get guns?

There is an earlier answer that I give where I note how the law is in different states, but Napolitano's question isn't about advocating getting rid of permits and I am not advocating doing away with permits.

Napolitano: Should people be able to walk around with guns on their hips or under their jackets everywhere in the United States?

Lott: Well, we pretty much do that now. We have 48 states that to one degree or another allow citizens to be able to carry concealed handguns. We have 5 states now that people don't even have to have a permit to be able to do that. And the evidence is pretty consistent. Some states have had this for 90 years.

Here is the edited clip that Media Matters puts up. When I can find an unedited clip from the appearance I will put that up instead.

Given that Media Matters has no problem using a doctored picture of me (editing the color of my hair, skin, and clothes and distorting my hair) presumably because they presumably believe that it makes me look bad, it is surprising that even people such as Paul Krugman and Brad DeLong never question whether Media Matters will use doctored screen shots of webpages.
A response to Paul Krugman's other false claims is available here.
A response to the above post by Media Matters is available here.

UPDATE: After getting caught redhanded, Media Matters' defense is that the just didn't realize that somehow they had posted a doctored picture. Media Matters claims to be an expert on the most minute details of my life, including frequent visits to my website where there is a picture of me, but at the same time they claim they had no idea what I really looked like and thus they blame someone else for having doctored my picture without their knowledge.

Media Matters claims that "Lott offers nothing to back up that assertion" that they will falsify photographic information. They have just been caught using a photograph of me multiple times that edited the color of my hair, skin, and clothes and distorting my hair. But heck they now claim that they didn't really know what I looked like. Media Matters instead tries reiterating their earlier claim that they hadn't altered one of my quotes after getting caught doing that also. Now they claim they didn't know what I looked like when they use a doctored photo of me, and they say it is fixed anyway because they have changed the picture. Sorry, but changing the photo after you have been caught doesn't undo what was done to begin with. For a website that has made it impossible for me to respond on their website to their many false claims, it isn't too surprising to see the way that Media Matters tries to extricate themselves from these false claims when they are caught.